


Let Your Hopes, Not Your Hurts, Shape Your Future

by Jane0Doe



Series: It's Just Paint... Right? [1]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics)
Genre: Blue Lantern, Blue Lantern Jason Todd, Bruce Wayne is a Bad Parent, Jason Todd is a Blue Lantern, Jason Todd is a Lantern, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:09:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28200669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jane0Doe/pseuds/Jane0Doe
Summary: Jason is an embodiment of the hope held by the bitter and the broken. He reaches out not to those who spend their days in the light and have for a brief moment found themselves in the shadows, but to those who have known only darkness yet toil and work for even a flicker of something more.Jason Todd is the Hope that endures because it’s all you have left.
Relationships: Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne, Jason Todd & Hope Corgi
Series: It's Just Paint... Right? [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2065848
Comments: 29
Kudos: 184





	Let Your Hopes, Not Your Hurts, Shape Your Future

**Author's Note:**

> This idea is the love child of a group of ppl on discord and I blame them entirely for the mess that will be coming from it. Yes I helped but I still blame them  
> :)

The weirdest part of all this isn’t the fact that he was chosen by a lantern ring. Nor was it the fact that the ring wasn’t from the red, yellow or  God forbid it black corps that chose him.

No.

The weirdest thing is that he now bleeds Blue.

_ Blue. _

Bright. Sparkly. Blue.

Like if he didn’t know it was his blood, he’d think that he’d gotten some of Lian’s nail varnish or glitter paint on him.

Which as he understands it, is the intention of it all.

As far as anyone else knows a Lantern is nearly impossible to injure once they acquire a ring.

Bruce had always called bullshit on that.

Guess he was right on that point at least, even if Jason thought that wasn’t so much detective work but a refusal to see Jordan as a threat.

Then again, he’d also called bullshit on Jordan’s explanation that the shimmering green paint-like substance he left everywhere after an intense fight was just discharge from the ring.

However, that belief Jason knew was born not from B’s detective reasoning but his belief that the man left the stuff everywhere after a fight on purpose. Most likely as some kind of joke in order to piss him off. After all, everyone knew that the Bat heavily funded the League’s clean up program.

Never let it be said that Bruce didn’t have an ego to match his intellect.

Listening to B grumble about it when he was Robin had always been hilarious. Sometimes the highlight of his Day, especially when things started to get rough between them.

Towards the end taking the mickey out of Green Lantern was one of the only things they could do without it ending in a fight or being stiff and awkward.

Knowing what he does now, it doesn’t seem as funny anymore.

If the man ever actually found out the truth… yeah. Jason definitely isn’t going to be the one to tell him.

He doesn’t even know if he’s going to tell the old man what he’s become at this point.

He can’t imagine ‘No Meta’s, Aliens or Powered People In Gotham’ Batman letting the son he barely tolerates Enter Gotham again once he has a more valid excuse than “he doesn’t do what I want.”

Not to mention the fact that his thoughts and feelings are such an exposed mess that letting B take another hit at him right now would end terribly.

Then again that’s only if he actually believed that a blue ring would pick Jason after everything he’s done.

Even now none of it feels real.

Hell, it doesn’t even  _ look _ real.

His blood, once no different to that of any other human, now glows softly as it shifts and shimmers, contrasting starkly against the skin of his hand as it trickles down his fingers.

If he looks closely, past the molten shades of blue that constantly intermix and spark and blend and  **pulse** , he can see flecks of something more. Hints of green, white, indigo, a lot less red than he expected and a surprising amount of violet given what each colour is supposed to represent.

The other lanterns he’d asked had each gone on a long spiel about what they thought it meant for this or that colour other than Blue to be present within your blood once you accepted the ring and became a lantern.

Some claimed that it was just a fluke.

Others believed that it meant nothing.

Some assholes said that it meant that the more ‘diversity’ in your blood’s colouring, the weaker your link to your ring and the lantern corps you belonged to.

Others still believed that it was symbolic of what other rings you might be capable of using. The one’s who’d held that belief had referenced that prick Rayner with his multicoloured blood and Gardener, a green lantern from earth that he’d never actually had the chance to meet.

The list went on.

In the end, all that anyone knew for certain was that the colour of their blood and even its composition changed as a protective countermeasure so that the enemy couldn’t see them bleed. It was one of the few abilities shared by every lantern across every Corps.

Personally, he liked Hope Corgi's explanation best.

The adorable little dog had told him that the rings turned their blood into a reflection of their hearts and souls. It was shorter than a lot of the other reasons he’d been given, but also made something inside of him that had been cold for a very long time thaw slightly.

After coming out of the pit, the few times he’d allowed himself to imagine his soul, he’d pictured it as some dark, tainted thing. Twisted beyond recognition by the Pit and everything he’d done. Everything that had been done  _ to _ him.

To visualise it as something so beautiful… it makes him hope.

And maybe that’s the point.

Jason had never considered himself as a very hopeful person. It had taken his mentor pointing out that most in his position would have given up long ago to realise that the idea of hope he had in his mind wasn’t entirely accurate.

Sure, there were those like Hope Corgi who shone with it for all to see, bubbly and joyful in the Hope they held, confident in their ability to spread it. Not even contemplating the idea that showing it so easily might make them and their hope vulnerable.

Might make them a  _ target _ .

Hope Corgi is the Hope that people are born with. That inborn hope that everyone starts out with and some loose as life carries on and they realise that everything isn’t going to be okay and sometimes you just aren’t enough.

Corgi’s is the hope of a child, innocent and pure but easily lost. It is the hardest kind of Hope to regain.

Jason is the Hope that people choose to keep despite everything and everyone telling you it’s pointless. His Hope is just as strong but unlike Corgi it’s hidden, locked away inside where it’s safe from those that would actively seek to stamp it out.

Jason is an embodiment of the hope held by the bitter and the broken. He reaches out not to those who spend their days in the light and have for a brief moment found themselves in the shadows, but to those who have known only darkness yet toil and work for even a flicker of something more.

Jason Todd is the Hope that endures because it’s all you have left.

**Author's Note:**

> Shout out to Here_Be_Hyperfixations for Gramma checking this for me  
> also sorry to everyone who's read shit over for me and I forgot to meant you.  
> I'm trying to be better at that


End file.
